Every Kid in a Park, an initiative to do just what its title says, kicked off Sept. 1 in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and all national parks. It focuses on fourth-grade students, who will be given free access to any national park, forest, land or water for the 2015-2016 school year. The pass also grants access to the fourth-grader’s family when in the company of said 9-year-old.
“It’s hard seeing all the trees broken,” comments Dianne Nichols of Arbor Pines. “It reminds me of broken legs and broken arms.” Nichols and her husband, Fred, are among numerous Glen Arborites whose woods suffered from the Aug. 2 storm. The second week after the storm, a team of seven retirees from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) of Michigan arrived to help those who, like the Nichols, had applied for that help at the Glen Arbor Township Hall. Afterwards, Dianne describes them and the work they did.
If Kerry Korpela wrote a back-to-school essay entitled “What I Did On My Summer Vacation,” she said this would be her first sentence: “I had an incredible time at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, appreciating nature and changing my life.”
Glen Arbor needs help — hired help, the kind that works for wages. Although the community turned itself inside out to help one another after the recent superstorm, the devastation left in its wake after the tree and power line pros left highlights a pre-existing problem. We who are of a certain age (and I do speak for myself) need young, able-bodied workers — desperately.
Environmentalists, activists, citizens and a growing number of Michigan policymakers worry that if Pipeline 5 under the Mackinac Straits were to rupture and spill oil directly into the world’s largest freshwater resource, the damage could decimate aquatic ecosystems, local economies and the tourism industry. One in five Michigan jobs are tied, directly or indirectly, to safe and clean water.
Many Leelanau homeowners are hoping the governor’s state of disaster proclamation following the Aug. 2 megastorm will help fund their debris cleanup. Unfortunately, they may find those hopes dashed, especially if they expect financial help any time soon.
Gov. Rick Snyder today directed the Michigan State Police to amend a recent disaster declaration for Grand Traverse County to include Leelanau County after severe thunderstorms caused widespread damage in both counties on Aug. 2.
After the shock of entering the dense-leaved maple canopy sheared to the ground and shouldered aside like the dead dropped in their tracks, after all that what I finally see are breaking points. The storm’s catastrophe bars comprehension except in stages, but every moment our eyes are open it becomes more real: massive trunks stacked like proverbial pick up sticks — all cliché but what else do I have in the first moments of first seeing? But this is no game. Still, I am so stunned I have no fresh language to describe this — it’s all too dense, thick with damage. The heart aches and the mind can’t find the way to the words, or even the real. When do I see the breaking points? The crack and twist, wood’s open wounds, the new right angle that is all wrong for the verticality of a tree. Not until the end.
During one extraordinary week in August 2015, the sounds that dominated our town were the whirr of winds and the ugly crack of trees, followed by the buzz of chainsaws, the hum of generators, and the cheering and car honking as Consumers Power trucks and linemen rolled into town like a liberating army.
Townspeople are ebullient as they embark on an unfathomable cleanup task. Landowners with five, 10, 20 or more trees to remove are looking at a cost of thousands of dollars; in many cases, tens of thousands. Most insurance companies cover only a small portion — if any — of tree and brush removal that is not threatening insured structures or blocking roads.